Russian opposition barred from EU summit protest

By Staff
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Google Oneindia News

MOSCOW, May 18 (Reuters) Russian police today prevented opposition leaders including chess champion Garry Kasparov from flying to the venue of a Russia-EU summit where the opposition had planned a protest march.

Anti-Kremlin protesters led by Kasparov were planning to hold a rally in Samara, a Volga River city 1,000 km southeast of Moscow and 70 km from the summit venue of Volzhsky Utyos.

''When I tried to register for the flight, airport workers told me they cannot get my ticket through their computer system,'' a clearly irked Kasparov told Reuters Television at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport.

Captain Alexander Adamov, in charge of the airport's police, told Reuters ''our computer does not recognise ... (Kasparov and his group's) tickets''.

Kasparov described the captain as a ''puppet'', adding: ''It's obvious there was an order from above.'' Deputy Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on the sidelines of the EU summit there was no foul play by authorities and denied that the issue would cloud the summit.

''We have a rich agenda,'' he said.

Kasparov said the situation in Putin's Russia was no better than in Zimbabwe or Moscow's post-Soviet ally Belarus, both seen by the West as among the world's most undemocratic regimes.

''Am I angry? I can only laugh. Just look around - this is Russia's constitution, this is Russian law. People in plainclothes are all around, and they can do whatever they want,'' he told Reuters.

''The message that should get across is that ... Putin's place is with (Zimbabwean President Robert) Mugabe and (Belarussian President Alexander) Lukashenko.'' Delayed for about an hour, the Samara-bound airliner finally set off, one-third full and without the protesters.

Among Kasparov's group of around 20 Kremlin critics were Eduard Limonov, head of the radical National Bolshevik party, and prominent human rights advocate Lev Ponomarev.

Two journalists from the Wall Street Journal and the London Daily Telegraph intending to fly to Samara were also stranded, their tickets and passports held by airport officials after ''not being recognised'' by airport computers, they told Reuters.

Putin's one-day meeting with top European Union officials today is widely expected to end without the launch of talks on a cornerstone EU-Russia partnership treaty, because Poland is blocking it as part of its trade row with Moscow.

The opposition planned its rally during the summit to attract wider public attention to what it sees as Russia's backtracking on its democratic pledges under Putin.

Wearing white hospital gowns, a group of the Kremlin-backed Nashi youth group appeared at the airport and jeered at Kasparov's stranded delegation.

''We protect the surrounding people from the negative energy which Kasparov can emit,'' one of them said.

Reuters NY GC1354

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